Funny that some friend once replied, "wet dreams!" :P Apart from that? Hmm... fortunately, I happened to read an article from Science Reporter, October 2008 issue. I have tried to extract some key points to be noted by EVERY fella who sincerely tries to be a metropolitan, to ensure his/her sanity!

It's a general belief that we sleep to restore our strength after the day's activity. But dear, it's atmost a pittance, 50 K.cals, we save, sleeping all through the night. Then why? why do we sleep? To answer, let me narrate a story.

Once upon a time there lived a creature with minimal senses, no focal vision, not much activity. 'Sleep' was then primarily intended for a state of inactivity, as it was. But as the evolution took place, the creature gained the focal vision, a continuous activity which sends a hell lot of data to the brain for processing. And there were other senses too.

Now, there are three kinds of memories.

• Sensory memory
• Short term memory(STM)
• Long term memory(LTM).

The data which is sent by those senses is temporarily stored in Sensory memory. This temporary memory again has two kinds.

• Declarative memory, for things which can be expressed through speech/language, like a by-hearted essay.
• Procedural memory, for skilled performances like riding bike.

As temporary memory is limited, there should be some mechanism that processes, encodes and sends the data to LTM and clear the temporary memory. The brain is the in-charge, but waking brain can't do this, when it is processing other data. So, there is this so called Sleep 'activity', where and when the brain actually does that stuff, an important thing, as you can realise! This is called "Memory cosolidation". Reinforcing this fact, there is an observed increase in firing of neurons, 5-10 times more, in few stages of sleep. There is also a hormone called melatonin produced by pineal gland in sleep, which helps remove carbonyl garbage from brain, produced during it's activity. Now, Sleep is organized into various stages, which are facilated only if we have a long, single stretch sleep. Not the way we take few naps now and then!

So, my dear readers, you be whatever (a researcher?) doesn't exempt you from allowing few natural things, like a good sleep, to take over your other obligations. If you are still not convinced to spare around 7 hrs a day to sleep, then you might suffer from one of these things...

Grogginess : Slow in reaction, unclear with ideas etc.
Irritability : need I say more?
Loss of concentration
Affecting part of brain which deals with language, memory and sense of time.

So, buddies - Owls or Larks! do sleep well!!

P.S : Congrats Gani and Srp for getting their work published!